Umrao village for Lokanath Goswami’s disappearance

Vrindavan, 2016.07.27 (VT): Umrao is the site where Lokanath Goswami did his bhajan when first in Braj, and also the site where Radha Vinode was revealed to him.

Babaji has been Secretary of the Umrao Radha Kishori Mohan temple trust board for about ten years now. Parameshwar Das Baba, the Mahant, is also a disciple of Haridas Shastri and he appealed to Satyanarayana Dasaji for help when local villagers started to cause trouble. So he goes every year, taking some of the others from Jiva with him.

A new front gate is being built to the temple. The temple itself is slowly growing. Seven Vaishnavas live on the premises, serving and doing bhajan.

The access road from Chhata is narrow and unpaved, with uninterrupted fields of rice behind the tall grass and acacia trees.

Kishori Kund. It is hardly a kund, appearing to be more of a lake or wetland of fairly considerable size. It is, as you will see from later pictures, quite attractive for birds.

The temple is not a supreme aesthetic delight. Maybe over the years.

Villagers waiting for prasad by Kishori Kund.

The lake on the temple side is surrounded by peelu and babul trees, which are home to large numbers of bagula and other species of birds.

Those splotches you see up in the branches are bagula (baka) nests or birds.

The temple has forty acres, much of which is being used for growing rice.

These trees are really quite something. This is a pilu tree like the ones in Nidhivan. I wonder how old they are.

And of course there are cows.

People milling around the altar. The deities stayed open throughout the prasad seva.

I met a lot of Krishna Dasas today. This young baba lives in Vrindavan and studies at the Jiva Institute.

The pushpa samadhi of Lokanath Goswami. The actual samadhi is of course in Gokulananda temple in Vrindavan.

Babaji and Satya Das Baba, his godbrother who also acts as treasurer for the temple trust.

Many Babajis had come from Govardhan and Vrindavan, some from Barsana.

Malpua and vegetable, the foundational Braj feast.

Eddoes (arvi in Hindi, kochu in Bengali). I guess they were out after harvesting to get a little dry

Liined up and ready to eat.

Shyamsundar Dasji and the deities, Radha Kishori Mohan.

Just before leaving I went up on the roof and saw the amazing number of birds.

In the green canopy, you can see the white bagula, but there is a peacock there and a lot of other species as well.

Amazing to see this nice wetland. As with everything else in India, I tend to worry about its preservation, but at least for the present it appears to be thriving.